I made my third visit to the Dickinson College Archives. I decided to revisit the materials I looked at during my last visit. They had a lot of useful information, and I would like to center my project around a comparison of the differing experiences of the two men. My further research on John Taylor Cuddy revealed some interesting information about his experience as a Union soldier in the Civil War. His letters, of which there are many, often spoke of the hardships of being in the war. He tells of the long, tiring marches he had to participate in. Most marches were ten miles at a time, and sometimes included thousands of men. He also speaks of the complexities of the mass movement that the Union army was. One letter paints an image of a line of almost 100 wagons carrying grain and corn for the soldiers. Some of his earlier letters reveal Cuddy’s strong belief that the war would be short-lived, and with a Union victory: “We have ming rifles, the enemy should cower down.” In many of his letters, especially the ones from the later years of the war, he states that he misses his family, wishes to stop being a soldier, and wants to return home. One major similarity between John Cuddy and Thomas Miller Griffith, the man who recorded the events of the shelling of Carlisle in a letter to his family, is their strong commitment to the Union army. One concept that Griffith makes very clear in his letter is that the Confederates were not welcome in Carlisle when they came. He tells of how the people of Carlisle were reluctant to give supplies to the Confederates, and refused to open the churches for fear that doing so would make it look like they were welcoming the rebels. The confederates ended up receiving the supplies they desired, however, because they took prisoners to the square until their demands were met. Unlike the Rebels, when the Union soldiers came to town they were graciously given the supplies they needed without struggle. During the actual shelling Griffith hid in a basement in order to avoid the danger. Some wounded soldiers were even taken and treated in West College on Dickinson’s campus. I particularly enjoy the story of the shelling at Carlisle because it is the chapter of the Civil War previous to the Battle of Gettysburg, which is something that I have learned about and heard my entire life after growing up in Gettysburg. I look forward to continuing to compare the stories of these two men in closer detail.
P.S. Random Side Note – After studying in the Dickinson College Archives, it made participating in the protests at Dickinson this week even more exciting because I know that what occurred at the protests and because of them will be a documented and appreciated as a part of the school’s past in the archives.